Apologies to the faithful for missing another couple days this week. It’s been a mix of being too busy with the extra curriculars, and a little drained from the job action stuff that’s made me a little low energy this week.
From the picket line, morale is holding. We’ve adjusted to the new normal, and we’re all making the most of it. We just finished five weeks yesterday at my site, though other teams have been on strike for as long as eight weeks now.
We get a lot of feedback from the public about how bare the liquor store shelves are, but only the occasional comment about anything else. I’ve heard a couple people talk about things like vulnerable sector checks through the Criminal Records Review Program, name changes, or security worker licensing, which are all similarly either slowed down or on hold. I don’t believe you can register a business right now with that whole team on strike either.
Anyway, this is all to say that it’s a weird time to be a public servant in a province with an NDP government. It’s nice to see that the BC Greens are capitalizing on the moment and showing up at rallies and on picket lines to support us though.
And yesterday we had some visitors from the Vancouver & District Labour Council which was cool. I’m still not really sure what they do, but they came by with halloween candy to show their support. There were some longshoremen there, who have a much different experience with job action than we do.
But there’s good news if you’re a jays fan! We just watched the highlights from game one, and though neither of us know anything about baseball, it seemed like a pretty impressive win. Baseball salaries are ridiculous, but I enjoyed reading that the jay’s starting pitcher, a rookie named Trey Yesavage, who is only twenty-two and earning something like fifty-seven thousand dollars this season struck out Shohei Ohtani who just signed a ten-year, seven-hundred-million dollar deal.
Now I have New Girl in the background while I write this, and I’m trying desperately to think about what to put down. What have I written about so far? I expressed my love for Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino on the second, wrote a bit about Germany on the fifth, and my dream of having access to local zero sugar cola for a reasonable price on the seventh.
It’s been a wild ride, and I’d like to keep it going after the month is over. I don’t think five hundred words is unsustainable, right? Especially when you factor in the occasional breaks as just part of the process.
What I’d really like to do is write stories though. I think friends who’ve known me for a while would be surprised because I actually suck at telling stories. But I really like to write, and I’d like to do more of it. This exercise has really shown me how rewarding it can be to just put words down, string a couple of sentences together, and leave it up on the line for anyone to read.
Can you believe some people get paid for this?